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Reflections from a social media detox.

November 19, 2020

Taking Back my Attention

Throughout the month of October, I took the liberty in taking a break from social media. I kept email around because I had some important conversations I needed to keep up with, but everything else was logged out and deleted fro my phone.

As I reflect on this journey, I have discovered how important my attention is and how I need to re-evaluate where I spend this finite resource.

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Impressions

The beginning of the detox was okay, I wasn’t suffering in any sort of way and was enjoying the less demanding afternoons where I could put my attention elsewhere. It was only until a week or so after I started noticing some odd reactions inside of me.

One was the constant itch that I discovered I had when I was caught in states of idleness. For some reason, I was uncomfortable not really doing anything and supposedly social media was used to satisfy that. Ironically, there wasn’t much gained from these moments besides regret of lost time. I have learned that there is a beauty in the state of not being distracted; there's a lot to observe and become self aware about.

As I continued to experience days without constant access to social media, I began to question why I use these experiences which lead to adapt a digital minimalistic philosophy. I had to re-evaluate what I got from social media. Was it encouraging my passions/interests as well as growing my skill and thoughts? If not, why? If no why, then it doesn’t deserve my attention.

Attention is key here. The value of which attention holds is underestimated as someone who consumes media; attention is powerful and I believe it needs to be used in forwarding the quality of my life not distracting me from it.

Coming out of the detox, I have been slowly re-adding apps back making sure they pass the criteria of value of I have for them and if they don’t past then they won’t be continuing with me along this journey.

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Overall Conclusion

I am feeling like I have reset my mind in how I approach social media and I’m going forward in withholding the values of creativity and quality to when it comes to what I can from the tools; if those values become compromised then it’s not going to be worth it.

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